Cox Case Cops Denied Accelerated Rehab

A state judge Thursday turned down a request by four former New Haven cops for a chance to wipe their criminal records clean.

Judge Gerald L. Harmon made that decision on the sixth floor of the state Superior Courthouse on Church Street, after four cops who were arrested for injuring police detainee Randy Cox made their case for consideration of accelerated rehabilitation.

“Each individual here is unlikely to offend in the future,” Harmon stated. ​“Each has an honorable background of service to New Haven.”

But, he said, the alleged crimes are too serious to merit accelerated rehabilitation.

Accelerated rehabilitation allows individuals unlikely to become repeat offenders and who got in trouble for crimes not considered serious in nature to have charges expunged from their record by completing alternative court-imposed programming or conditions. 

Former Officers Oscar Diaz, Luis Rivera, Ronald Pressley, and Sgt. Betsy Segui applied to enter that program rather than head to trial for their roles in the injuries that left Randy Cox unable to move from the chest down while he was in police custody on June 19, 2022. Diaz, Segui, and Rivera have already been fired from the force because of the incident; so too has Officer Jocelyn Lavandier, who did not attend court Thursday because her counsel was unavailable. Pressley retired shortly after the fiasco. (A state arbitration panel recently overturned Diaz’s firing.)

Police arrested Cox on weapons charges without incident at a Lilac Street block party on June 19, 2022. En route to the police station, Officer Diaz, the driver of a prisoner conveyance van, slammed on the brakes to avoid crashing into another vehicle at the intersection of Division and Mansfield streets. That abrupt stop sent Cox flying head first into the wall of the van, injuring his neck and spine. The driver of the van later called for medical help but, instead of asking for an ambulance to come to the scene, the driver proceeded to take Cox to the detention center at 1 Union Ave. There, rather than waiting for a medical crew to attend to Cox’s crumpled and paralyzed body, officers at the police lock-up accused Cox of lying, demanded he stand up, pulled him out of the van, placed him in a wheelchair, and then dragged him across the floor into a cell.

Harmon noted that the cops were eligible to apply for accelerated rehabilitation since all five were charged with misdemeanors (rather than felonies) last January for their actions. Each officer previously pleaded not guilty to one count of second-degree reckless endangerment and one count of​“cruelty to persons.”

To determine whether each merited accelerated rehabilitation, Harmon could consider the circumstances and seriousness of the charges and event, the defendants’ background, the victim’s stance on the allegations, and the likelihood of future offenses.

“He’s been left with a permanent injury,” Attorney Jack O’Donnell said briefly on behalf of his client, Randy Cox. Therefore the cops, he said, ​“should be left with a permanent record.” 

The officers’ attorneys, meanwhile, all argued that their clients were public servants concerned with caring for their communities who got stuck in an unfortunate, complicated, and confusing scenario.

For example, first-up defender Ray Hassett said his client, Luis Rivera, was the ​“perfect person” for accelerated rehab. He, like the other attorneys, emphasized Rivera’s status as a good father and veteran officer with no past disciplinary actions. 

Cox had been drunk that day, the attorneys recalled, making it difficult for cops to ascertain Cox’s true condition while dragging him into a detention cell after he’d hit his head in the police van.

Some attorneys read letters from friends and colleagues of the cops testifying to their characters. None had intended to hurt Cox, they said, and therefore were exactly the kind of individuals meriting a second chance from the same justice system to which they were once hired to hold others to account.

They blamed the medics for failing to assess Cox’s injuries at the time of their own arrival to the scene. And they denied that any evidence exists to suggest the cops’ treatment of Cox in anyway exacerbated whatever injury he had already received upon falling when the van stopped short.

In an emotional counter-argument, New Haven State’s Attorney John Doyle read a transcript of the cops’ body cameras which heard Cox consistently ask for ​“help,” repeatedly stating ​“I’m fucking hurting, man,” while the officers continued to push his ​“twisted, contorted” body into a jail cell, going against standard protocol.

The state is not suggesting the cops had bad intent, Doyle said. And no one will ever know how the cops’ behavior affected Cox’s health. But the cops ​“chose to be police officers,” put Cox in a powerless situation, and acted in opposition to how any other ​“reasonable person” would in response to a person crying for help, Doyle argued

While the cops were charged with ​“mere misdemeanors,” Harmon said the issue at hand — Cox’s paralyzation — is certainly serious.

Indeed, he determined, Cox’s ​“resulting injuries are of such a serious nature that the court feels that precludes participation in the program.” 

The decision, Harmon emphasized, was not an assessment of whether any officer was guilty or not. The four defendants will next return to court on May 9 for a continued pre-trial hearing. Besides Hassett, the other attorney representing the officers are Matthew Popilowski, Jake Donovan, and Greg Cerritelli.

In a press release distributed Thursday afternoon, Mayor Justin Elicker and New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson called Harmon’s ruling ​“the right one,” because it aims to hold the officers to account for their actions by allowing the criminal charges brought against them by the state to proceed forward.